Job Description
Join us in revolutionizing Nordstrom's in-store customer experience through cutting-edge technology. We're modernizing our store selling technology stack and building next-generation capabilities that seamlessly connect digital and physical retail. As Principal Engineer, you'll lead the technical strategy for point-of-sale systems, clienteling tools, and omnichannel platforms that define how customers and store teams interact during the shopping experience.
What You'll Do
Technical Leadership & Architecture
- Architect scalable, reliable store selling and transaction solutions serving hundreds of stores and processing millions of customer transactions
- Lead the technical vision for our point-of-sale ecosystem, driving next-generation capabilities while ensuring performance, security, and exceptional user experiences
- Design systems enabling seamless omnichannel customer journeys that integrate selling empowerment tools with in-store experiences
- Make key architectural decisions spanning selling, clienteling, and transaction domains that shape the future of store technology
Operational Excellence & Innovation
- Champion operational excellence through improvements in observability, telemetry, monitoring, and automation
- Drive technical excellence across engineering teams, establishing best practices for distributed systems, real-time transaction processing, payment security, and system resilience
- Leverage AI and machine learning to optimize transaction processing, personalize customer experiences, and enable predictive capabilities across store operations
- Utilize AI-powered development tools (e.g. Claude) to accelerate code development, improve code quality, and enhance team productivity.
- Stay current with advances in retail technology, payment systems, customer experience platforms, and AI-driven retail innovation
Collaboration & Mentorship
- Partner with product, store operations, customer experience, merchandising, and business stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions
- Provide technical leadership as an individual contributor, mentoring senior engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and architectural guidance
- Guide teams in adopting AI-assisted development practices and establishing best practices for AI tool integration in the development lifecycle
- Collaborate with platform and enterprise services teams to ensure cohesive integration across the technology ecosystem
Required Qualifications
Experience
- 8+ years in software engineering with significant focus on retail systems, distributed architectures, or customer-facing applications
- 3+ years of technical leadership as an individual contributor, influencing engineering teams in high-scale retail or e-commerce environments
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (Master's preferred, or equivalent experience)
Technical Expertise
- Deep expertise in transaction processing systems, point-of-sale architecture, payment processing, and real-time financial systems
- Strong background in distributed systems design, microservices architectures, event-driven systems, and high-volume transaction workloads
- Experience with cloud platforms and modern technology stacks for building resilient, scalable applications
- Proficiency in leveraging AI coding assistants to accelerate development workflows, from code generation to testing and documentation.
- Strong programming skills with ability to make trade-off decisions at multiple system levels
- Network resilience patterns, offline mode capabilities, and data synchronization strategies
Domain Knowledge
- Regulatory compliance expertise: PCI-DSS, payment security, and data privacy
- Proven track record building production-grade systems with 99.95%+ uptime
- Deep commitment to operational excellence: observability tools, automated testing, deployment automation, and proactive monitoring
- Customer-focused mindset with ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions
Leadership & Communication
- Strong mentoring capabilities with track record of developing engineers' technical skills
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
- Demonstrated ability to drive innovation while balancing business needs, operational constraints, and system stability
Bonus Qualifications
- Experience modernizing legacy retail point-of-sale systems
- Background in omnichannel retail technology and unified commerce platforms
- Previous experience leading large-scale technology migrations or platform consolidations
- Experience implementing AI-powered features such as intelligent recommendations, dynamic pricing, fraud detection, or conversational AI for customer service
- Track record of establishing AI-assisted development practices and tooling standards across engineering organizations
- Experience implementing observability and automation improvements that significantly reduced operational overhead
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We’ve got you covered…
Our employees are our most important asset and that’s reflected in our benefits. Nordstrom is proud to offer a variety of benefits to support employees and their families, including:
- Medical/Vision, Dental, Retirement and Paid Time Away
- Life Insurance and Disability
- Merchandise Discount and EAP Resources
A few more important points...
The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive. There may be additional duties, responsibilities and qualifications for this job.
For Los Angeles or San Francisco applicants: Nordstrom is required to inform you that we conduct background checks after conditional offer and consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with legal requirements per Los Angeles, Cal. Muni. Code 189.04 and the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. For additional state and location specific notices, please refer to the Legal Notices document within the FAQ section of the Nordstrom Careers site.
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Pay Range Details
The pay range(s) below has been provided in compliance with state specific laws. Pay ranges may be different for other locations. Pay offers are dependent on the location, as well as job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
$191,000.00 - $297,000.00 Annual
This position may be eligible for performance-based incentives/bonuses. Benefits include 401k, medical/vision/dental/life/disability insurance options, PTO accruals, Holidays, and more. Eligibility requirements may apply based on location, job level, classification, and length of employment. Learn more in the Nordstrom Benefits Overview by copying and pasting the following URL into your browser: https://careers.nordstrom.com/pdfs/Ben_Overview_17-19.pdf